I see there is a thread on TB for Jaco unbelievers to unite. Maybe we need one here.
Some of the upset in the TB thread from Jaco fans is off the scale. To quote a particularly ripe example:
"well maybe one of you genuises that don't 'get' JP will do something remotely approaching innovation. there has been such an emense dumbing down across the whole society that most of you wouldn't even hear the changes to many of the compositions. So, just keep doing what you're doing if it works for you.
I lived through those times and even knew JP. It was exciting as we went to work, 6 nights/week (yep thats right), and always tried to be better every night - we were intense.
I'm extremely open minded so when one of you breaks through the noise make sure to post. I've been waiting."
In my opinion you cannot complain about a perceived mass dumbing down of society (Boomerese for 'things were better in my day', which is the wistful nostalgia I thought y'all were rebelling against in the first place), then misspell "immense", "geniuses" and "that's".
And again, what is with the dick-waving statement of playing six shows a week? All that hard work and you are still an anonymous forum troll? Maybe you weren't that good a musician, otherwise we would have heard of you. You always tried to be better every night? You were wasting your time, because it didn't pay off in any meaningful way. Sorry!
I'm a fan of Chris Squire. If somebody started a thread titled "I don't get the hype surrounding Chris Squire" then I wouldn't make it my life's mission to insult and call out all of those that claimed not to see the appeal in Squire's bass playing. "Come back when you can come up with an original bass line as Long Distance Run Around, cretin". Why bother?
Speaking as an angry millennial, if I am part of a dumber society it is because Boomers kept voting for the political parties that promised to cut education spending. Not my fault in any way! I also find it hard to believe that the best music in all of human history just happened to occur when Boomers were in college. I further fail to see how any of that correlates with my apparent inability to follow the changes in the sort of saccharine, sappy lift muzak that Weather Report and co happened to make. As I've said before, a corner of the bass community, robustly overrepresented on Talkbass, grants tacky '80s jazz fusion music with a completely unwarranted hegemony over all other forms of music and bass playing. Half the videos that get posted over there of up-and-coming bassists are younger guys playing dated-sounding Quiet Storm-style soul/jazz fusion music. Honestly, by the time that every new beginner keyboard had a 'fretless' patch that aped that nasal, chorus'd Jaco tone, the wannabe Berklee crowd should have known the game was up.
All these guys clambering over each other to tell their 'I worked with Jaco' story, but not one of them thought to take him to a shrink or moderate his drink or drugs intake.
